thisavrou_log | Insert Whale Noises

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mass effect: nihlus kryik

Insert Whale Noises

Who: Nihlus and anyone who wants to come along really
When: March 11th
Where: Ceta, the docks and then moving onto a whale watching spot
What: Whaaaale watching
Warnings: None yet!

Docks

"Alright everyone!" Nihlus announces, halfway up the ramp, waving his hand to get everyone's attention on him. "Before any of you boards this ship, there are some rules! They're about the same for the Temporaries for the most part: no potential sources of ignition, keep your breathing masks on and definitely do NOT try to go skydiving."

Seriously. Not good for your health.

"There is one additional rule to this however," he continues. "NO light shows. Whatsoever. No flashlights, no laser pointers, no holograms or anything similar. According to our the ship's Captain -and our guide for the day-, the whales react badly to light displays and since we're whale watching, scaring them off defeats the entire purpose of the trip."

He pauses, looking over the small gathering before shrugging and finishing: "If that all sounds good with you, feel free to board. We'll be leaving in about ten minutes. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or our Captain."

And with that, Nihlus ducks out of view. He will be found again in the ship's cabin, speaking in low tones with the Captain as they prepare to leave.

Whale Watching

It'll be almost an hour before they actually, properly, see any whales.

The boat sits perfectly still, hanging in the calm air between the massive canyons of clouds that stretched up and down for kilometers on either side of them. Below them, far, far below them, and yet still so far from the planet's core, is a dark roiling mass that was lit up by a spiderweb of super sized lightning storms.

In the distance, dark, fuzzy silhouettes begin to appear against the white and strange, alien teal of the gas giant's skies. They drift lazily through the upper atmosphere and leaving trails of white fluff in their wake.

Mic Test

It's another hour into the watching. The whales are closer now, curiouser now, and relaxed enough to drift close to the boat.

In some ways, the whale watching was a bit of a guise.

Tourists doing touristy things was expected and they were nothing if not tourists here.

Nihlus is leaning against the ship's railing, watching the pod of whales at they lazily circled the boat. He's dimmed the glow of his omni-tool down to its lowest setting, the outlines of the tool barely visible against his forearm. He appears to be fiddling with some settings on the device.

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She's been quiet through most of the ride, only slipping up to distribute snacks or crack the odd joke — any further engagement lost in the great rolling fog of the day.

It's just relaxing to be up here, an intruder on the enormous, cetacean ballet around them. It's difficult to keep your eyes from the skies for long.

Except, apparently, for Nihlus. Alice drifts up to lean into the railing beside him, peering over with undisguised interest. Her voice stays low and quiet, for all that the creatures around them don't seem to mind the noise. To raise it any louder would crack the delicacy of the scene in two.

"Tell me you're not firing up the cat game right now." It's not accusing, just amused.

Edited 2016-03-13 22:06 (UTC)

Sam had no idea what Nihlus was doing over there, but over here he was using the holographic display he'd made for the little MID screen to watch this particular pod of curious whales being followed by a pair of boats.

They weren't visible to the naked eye. Massive cloud banks obscured everything. Huge lightening storms roiled until below them was a caldera of white and dark cloud, but the whales sailed over it, completely unbothered.
As the boats came closer Sam waited until he was certain they were now appearing on each other's screens. Then he deployed his little digital "package".

Grinning he looked up from his MID and put on a pair of what kind of looked like Aviators, only thicker. Basically it let him see heat signatures. This close he could see quite a bit of detail, and could therefore watch as one boat (equipped with a nasty harpoon canon and net on the bow) takes the second boat to be a whale. That harpoon leaves a hole clean through decking and the netting ties several people down. There's a lot of colorful cursing on both boats but Sam is pleased with his creation's performance.

Whomever those boats came into contact with would have the same issue until they found a way to dig out the algorithm that has the hunters hunting each other.

"The cat game?" Nihlus asks softly, smiling as he casts the woman a glance before shifting slightly so that she could see what he was doing.

The screen hovering about his omni-tool looks a lot like a sound mixer.

"How have you been enjoying the trip?" he says instead of explaining it. "We've lucked out on the weather. It was very choppy a few hours before the trip."

"If you're not careful there, you're going to deprive someone of their parents."

There's a 6'5" space dinosaur peering over Sam's shoulder, brazenly looking at the readouts on his MID. In contrast to his words, however, said space dinosaur doesn't seem too disapproving.

The grin downgraded to a smile, though Sam isn't elaborating on why. It doesn't take much to dismiss the holo interface altogether and since he's a little more used to non-humans (or at least a little more used to not showing it if he isn't) Sam just shrugs then removes the glasses and the miniature rebreather.

"Pretty sure the whales might have something to say about dead parents. kind of had the impression this had been going on a while."

"Haven't you played it yet? Totally addictive. My theory is they're using it to pacify us all."

Alice slips a wide smile. It's half for the joke, a little more than half gratitude for the view. It's nice when people aren't secretive about every little thing. It's rare.

"This has been better, though. It's good to get some air." That isn't under her own power. Alice has already learned the hard way just how nasty Ceta's storms can be. She points out a pinky, gesturing vaguely at the screen. "Are you recording them? Their calls?"

"I'll have to look into it," he laughs. "Sounds like like the type of pacification I might like."

And, hey, Nihlus gets to find out what was up with humans and their strange cat obsession. As far as he could tell, cats seems to be some kind of... pet?

Not that turians didn't have pets, but the animals their race kept around tended to be working animals rather than just being around for the sake of companionship.

"And yes. I'm trying to see if any patterns crop up," scrolling down the screen, he shows Alice the various recorded tracks he's made over the course of the trip. "I'm also going to see what happens when we play this stuff back to them, but I have to make sure it's not going to be anything rude before that."

"A good few decades at least, yes." They've been here long enough that they had the hunting operations down pat, anyways. Long enough to build a small hunting town.

"But. We're not the only ones being lied to." Nihlus leans against the railing next to Sam. "And the hunters aren't the main buyers of the minerals."

That said, stalling the operations until a solution is found wasn't a bad idea.

"I've recorded some of the sounds the whales have been making," the Spectre says instead of pushing the subject. "Want to see what happens when we play some of it back at them?"

"Sure."

Sam hadn't known who the main buyer was for said mineral. It was a Black Market affair and that's where he had stopped digging. It's an ugly business full of back room deals. But there's an awfully big difference between what amounts to a poaching operation and wholesale genocide.

"I don't know," She glances over the recordings. It's thorough, if nothing else. "I kind of like the idea of giant flying whales shouting obscenities. Have you spotted anything with it yet?"

"Disappointingly, none of these sound particularly like obscenities, but there are definitely some repetitions. What they might mean is up for speculation though."

Names? Greetings? Warnings? Who even knew? Nihlus wasn't a specialist in deciphering alien languages. That said, the whales looked relatively relaxed as far as what he could decipher through body language.

"The deep rumbling is new. I haven't heard that sound before."

"Oh. Good. That's not totally ominous." Alice adjusts her mask, squinting back to the clouds about them. It's difficult to think anything optimistic of the revelation, not when her brain's busy recounting half a dozen different disaster movie premises. "Are you sure it's coming from the whales?"

She's fiddling with own MID now, but the language functions are as much a mystery as ever.

There's never been a day in Nihlus' career where destroying the lives of just the low level mercs, soldiers or hunters ever solved the problem permanently. In fact, destroying people's livelihoods made them more desperate, gave the people funding the operations more power and made the situation infinitely more dangerous for everyone involved.

That included the lives of the whales.

It was an ugly equation.

"So," Nihlus starts conversationally as he scrolls through the various sounds he'd recorded on his omni-tool. "Do you think these guys are sentient?"

"Yes, although they only started emitting it about ten minutes ago." Coinciding with one of the whales circling in particularly close. It sounded... almost content?

Just because it sounded content didn't mean Nihlus should assume that's what it meant though. Asari bearing their teeth had a very different meaning compared to when a turian did it, after all.

"I'm taking the boat not being flipped over as good sign that it's nothing too terrible at least..."

Up until recently Sam Flynn would have said humans were the only sentient life on Earth. He didn't exactly consider himself an expert now, and his only idea had been to try to essentially buy some time to find out. It seemed like Nihlus had the same thought about finding out, and since he'd given Sam a ride it seemed rude not to answer truthfully.

"I think if they aren't sentient then they've got to be close to it. They know enough to tell the difference between boats like this that are just looking at them, and the boats that belong to the hunters."

"A lot of animals have that ability and they're not sentient," Nihlus points out. "Pets can be trained to identify potential threats to their owners and recognize the safe people."

He selects the low humming track and plays it.

"How do we prove sentience? How can we prove this isn't just a hunting operation?"

Watching one of the whales drift closer, Nihlus amps up the volume a little more. The humming noise is returned, along with a lazy barrel roll.

"A lot of animals have a ridiculous amount of intelligence but I know it doesn't stop my people from eating them." Being obligate carnivores and all meant having a very wide selection of meats in their culinary encyclopedia. "And I think humans eat... hm. Squid I think? Anyways, the hanar have recently began protesting that."

Sam seemed to honestly be thinking about that question. But after all; How does one prove sentience? There was no common language to fall back on with these whale-creatures. He's silent for a long time, thoughtful, then leaning against the railing a bit.

"…Give them a mirror."

Though definitely adding a deadpan; " One that won't drop and shatter into a million pieces ."

But that isn't the point, and we're back to that;" Give them a mirror, and if they recognize that is themselves, not another whale, then they are self-aware."

Sam shrugged and looked at Nihlus.

"It's how they were testing dolphins to see if they were self-aware back home."

The storms below them may be intimidating, but the whales — especially from such a close distance — are really a sight.

Usually, Church isn't the type to marvel at nature and its unfathomable beauty. He tells himself that this little outing is just one exception to that rule, just an excuse to get off the Moira, but the truth is that the massive creatures are both incredibly beautiful and terrifying. Not even Church can pretend not to give a shit as they glide past, eerily silent despite their size.

He spends an embarrassingly long time standing at the railing, gripping the cold metal with even colder fingers (it's chilly up here, goddamn), and when he spots Nihlus across the deck, he's surprised at how reluctant he is to look away.

But, well, Nihlus is someone he actually likes, amazingly enough, and Church hasn't had the chance to talk to him further since their meeting in the mess.

"Heyo," he says on his approach. Now that neither of them are seated, he has to crane his head back to look him in the face. The guy is tall; not unreasonably tall, but tall enough that he towers over Church by a good eight inches.

Edited 2016-03-23 05:32 (UTC)

"That still means they have the same level of self awareness as dolphins." Resting his chin atop a palm, Nihlus watches the massive, dark bodies float by. "And as I am led to believe, there are humans who eat dolphins."

Meaning that the mirror tests alone weren't proof enough. And that was what Nihlus was after here: enough proof.

"I suppose it'll be a starting point at least. The harder part would be finding one and transporting it."

And assuming they had time for another boat trip like this.

They've hit a bit of a lull in activities when the whales arrived. The ship's guests and crew were all quietly enamored by the sight of them and Nihlus wasn't much of an exception. He's standing off to the side by himself, hands folded neatly behind his back, expression pensive and oddly closed off.

The sound of approaching footsteps pulls the turian out of his thoughts and he turns slightly.

"Church," he greets, letting his mandibles loosen in a smile, the tension bleeding from his shoulders. "If you're looking for the snacks, you'll have to ask Alice where she put them."

"Yeah. If it was a threat you think they'd act a little more..." She waves a hand, then follows up lamely. "... Threatening."

Nailed it.

"Do they have any animals like this where you're from? We've got something similar, but they're waterbound."

And smart as all fuck. Alice has read papers on just some of the things that whales can do — or at least, what magicians suspect they can.

Why does everyone always immediately assume he's after snacks?

( Though he does cast a scrutinizing look in Alice's direction, just to pinpoint where she is for, uh. No particular reason. Really. Definitely not because he plans to shake her down for a candy bar later. )

"Nah, man," he says, then turns on his heel until he's facing the whales rather than Nihlus. He squints up through the clouds, wiping gathering condensation from his forehead and into his already damp hair. "Just here to chitchat a little. You enjoying the show?"

Whether Nihlus believes him or not, that's the bizarre truth. Nihlus also seemed to be extremely caught up in his thoughts before Church approached him, and he figures he could do with a distraction from whatever the fuck had him looking so serious. All out of the goodness of his own heart, too. What a saint.

"Anything that large tends to be in the waters for us too," Nihlus remarks with a thoughtful hum. "The biggest is the aroib. They're, hm. Very long? Silver-blue. And scalier than these whales."

Basically a sea serpent, except Nihlus doesn't know the word 'serpent' here.

"Their heads are about the same size as this boat and they eat microscopic ocean life forms."

Careful there, Church, you might pull something exercising that niceness muscle.

Fortunately, Nihlus has the grace to pretend he didn't see the look he sent Alice. There's a somewhat humored quirk to his right mandible, but it's brief and the turian's expression settles back to one of thoughtfulness.

"It's beautiful," he says, turning back to the view as well, his voice underlined by a note of genuine wonder. After a moment however, he chuckles and notes, "Although I can't help thinking that we've interrupted their equivalent of a daily evening walk."

"Sounds almost like dragons." She isn't about to explain that part. "Do they hunt them? The aroib?"

She parrots the pronunciation almost perfectly, only a slight hesitation to throw it off.

"They, uh. They used to hunt our whales." Her voice lowers, again as though the creatures around them will hear. "Still do, but it's. Controversial."

"Turians eat nearly animal on the planet and then some," Nihlus shrugs, although he notes the oddly perfect pronunciation with interest: the only thing lacking were the undertones. "The aroib aren't very smart. They're solitary and most of what they do is eat and swim. One of the previous Palavenian Primarchs really loved them though, and pushed a successful conservation program for them into effect."

Leaning back from the rail slightly, he sighs quietly.

"That said, the black market for parts of sentient people isn't new in terms of intergalactic history."

"Overhunting, corruption, charismatic megafauna... are you sure you guys aren't secretly human?"

It's a joke, but it's also a measure: Alice never knew Garrus well enough to guess at his species' broader relations. Nihlus doesn't seem to mind hanging around humanity, but if there's a line, Alice wants to know when it's crossed.

She shakes her head as he sighs.

"You think that's what's going on here, though?" The language in the museum was a little too defensive for her to take at face value, but there's smart and there's too smart to hunt. "The calls and all that, you think it might be a language?"

"Contrary to what supremacists think, we have a lot of commonalities and most of them aren't bad." Which isn't to say there aren't a lot of bad commonalities. The fact that Supremacists existed and think that the other species were all out to destroy their's was... an unfortunate commonality.

Still he casts her an amused look and offers, "That's an oddly species-centrist question though, don't you think?"

As for her second question, he shakes he head and looks out at the whales swimming around them.

"I don't know yet. Most of what I know is what I could glean from the people in the Temporaries. Most deny any signs of sentience but there are a few who think otherwise. This venture is mostly seeing if I can record some kind of evidence. Unfortunately, First Contact is not a situation I am fully trained for."

"Probably." She grins back — it's nice to be around someone who notices things. It's rarer than it ought to be. "We've barely been to our own moon. Haven't had much of an alternative to anthropocentrism."

It's half a lie: if magicians haven't been often off-world, they're still keenly aware of not being alone in it. To say nothing of the practice she's had in the days since.

"I'm not sure it still counts as First Contact if they've been slaughtering them for years. But I bet someone on the ship has experience. The Captains, if nothing else. Too many different kinds of people come through the Ingress for anything else."

"What year are you from? If you don't mind me asking. I'm from 2183 and a lot of people here seem to come from a significantly earlier time."

Like how many humans have never met aliens or even heard of any colonies on Mars yet.

"In this instance, First Contact is the first officially documented instance of communication," Nihlus explains with a slight shrug. "The people here might have communicated first, but they haven't recorded it. Mind you, I haven't really either, so far."

"2008. Well. It might be 2009 by now." She shrugs. Time gets a little weird with world-hopping. "Is the future cool?"

She suspects it's a more complicated answer than just 'yes' or 'no'.

"Either way, I'll put you down in the history books for it. Nihlus, documented first contact with giant space whales. That's got to be a pretty rare thing, even with galactic travel."

"Well, the last bit of human tech news I heard was something about perfecting the technology for making this, ah, 'coffee'? Apparently they used the mass effecting properties of element zero to separate the grounds and the final liquid product. Very fancy."

That was cool right? Domestic appliances on steroids was totally neat.

"I think I'd celebrate this historic occasion more if I didn't feel like such a tourist," Nihlus remarks dryly. "And so ill equipped. The usual diplomatic ships are all geared up with various forms of communications tech just for these occasion and here I am with an omni-tool."

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Insert Whale Noises

mic test; https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6ENA15aBFTI/hqdefault.jpg

mic check (I think...and omg I thought I posted this yesterday /o\ I have no excuse ahhh )

LMFAO

It is alright, friend!

kids never leave things in preview overnight orz

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It happens to the best of us. :u

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/slides in nine years late with starbucks (also: whale watching!)

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yoooooooo!

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